Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work from miniature painters from around the world. They are of every colour, gender, age and nationality, but all these people have at least two things in common: they love miniatures and they have all taken the Challenge.
This site features the current year's event along with archives of past Challenges.
Enjoy your visit and please come back soon.

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Wednesday, 30 March 2016

What a trip! The Challenge experience I find is hugely motivating. This time round I think I had done an excellent amount of prep. However I still had to do a lot of builds during the challenge. It was definitely year of the horse for me with expansion of my Mongols and Light Horse for the Red and Black from the previous challenge. An Arabian style army was started and will have a few more additions. I had 3 horses painted but no riders completed by the end of the challenge so they missed out on adding to the point total. If you want to see how they end up go and see my Blog.

Might be a few missing in the photo above but you get the idea. In order to stay focused on my own goals I only entered one theme challenge and that was the very last one. But I really enjoyed seeing everyone's responses to them. You just never know what fellow painters will create.

During the challenge...

I was sad when I got the news that Lemmy had gone as Motorhead's music is a constant painting companion. I couldn't listen to them for a few weeks after that news. We also saw the departure of Bowie.

I managed to introduce Millsy to a bomb run on my first postings because...you know...it's Millsy and he loves hard work.

I had the Grandkids visit which was great fun. Another one due really soon.

Over the Challenge it's supposed to be the Wet Season here in Darwin, NT, Australia. Yep, Stay inside and paint. However Feb was our driest and hottest Feb since the long, long ago. Very suck!

I actually got some games played during the challenge as well.

Looking forward to seeing you all next time round.

This is me leaning over the horde in the shade of the Tiki Bar (backyard).All photos of miniatures are taken here and cold beer is consumed and meat is Barbecued.

Just in case you do not have the correct attitude see video above to help you find it.

Wow, how time flies. It's end of march again, the challenge is over for just over a week and the trees outside are (sloooooowly) getting greener.

It was a great ride with our beloved Snowlord at the head again, the minions keeping everything (and everybody) right on track and my fellow participants arranging for the daily dose of eye candy.

Thank you all!

This year saw me only submitting to one of the bonus rounds. This was mostly due to a severe lack of time as well as the desire to get as much stuff done which would count in Chris' and my little Bavarian (Curt we still have to discuss that particular matter... Bavarian... pahh!) side duel. While Chris may have won that particular contest (and well deserved at that too), it proofed to be a much needed incentive to get up my sorry backside and get going. Thank you Chris, your price will be worked on in the (hopefully) not too distant future!

Schaeffers last Chancers

Late Roman Ballistae

US winter GI's...

...and the accompanying halftrack. Now in G'old Britain.

My only Bonus Round entry - Let it rip!

Curtgeld - Han Solo

82nd Airborne Division

Cold War gone hot

And last but not least the mug-shot as requested by our esteemed leader. I wasn't quite sure if I'd be able to convince my camera of taking a vaguely gracious picture of yours truly. So instead of taking chances I went for one where a little, but steely beauty would distract attention as much as possible. It was taken on the trip home from Tactica in February when the missus and I stopped by the German Tank Museum in Munster near Hamburg. If you, like me, should happen to have a soft spot for Tanks (for the most part German in this case) and be in the vicinity of Hamburg I do highly recommend you to pay a visit to that little gem of a museum.

I started this challenge wanting to bang out a whole lot of figures that I have had sitting around, I created a fancy spreadsheet and everything. I had also planned to get a figure in for every single theme week. Very quickly the planning went out the window as various things came up and as I got distracted by new figures, games, and video games.

I had however planned on that happening and set my goal at 1000 points even though I had about 2000 points laid out in my painting plan. While I didn’t get everything done, I did manage to get a large number of things done, and was able to beat the points goal I had set.

I forgot to include the ships that I had finished and the terrain pieces in the photo, both of which I was quite happy with.

I finished off a good bit of modern 28mm, a pile of new 28mm WW1 figures to add to my Through the Mud and the Blood games, more grey scale zombies for zombicide, and even another unit of French Napoleonics. So overall I am happy with everything I got done.

The two main things I did not finish, which I still need to are my Tau units (which got delayed due to waiting for a few more to come in) and another unit of Death Guard for 30k, which just got set aside for other priorities. Both of these will get done sometime soon though.

I had a lot of fun with the challenge and seeing all of the other great figures being done by everyone helped keep me motivated and painting over the winter, which is the whole point of it to me. So, I will be back next year and hope everyone else is as well.

Lastly, thanks to Curt for running this again (and to the minions who helped) and thanks to everyone else who entered for all the awesome eye-candy!

Please find attached my Challenge group shots, with my 'winter tools'. A little host compared to most but I'm satisfied that I crept past my target, and am delighted that the Challenge served to get a whole bunch more of the Spanish Civil War project finished.

This hasn't been a very productive year for me, as I've been living in
boxes and preparing to move in a few weeks. Numerous visits to our house, which is for sale, also meant I spent more time cleaning than painting!Still, a little Oldhammer got done...

A beast of Nurgle was raised...

A new period (Sci-Fi) was started...

and a first place was won in a Bonus theme round !

And, of course, I had to pay the piper...

So of course, my least productive year ever is the year Curt asks for a picture! I will oblige, but also cheat and include a picture of the finished Murawski's Baden battalion (researched and designed by yours truly) which was meant to be my last and most glorious entry of the year but missed the deadline by a few hours.

And here I am in front of my meager contribution.Yes, the Oldhammer painter is something of a nostalgia junkie...

It was once again a privilege to be a member of such an esteemed company of awesome, if a bit crazy, painters. Looking forward to crossing brushes with you all next year!

Another Challenge winds down and I'm trading my brushes for boots and running shoes.

I think I only needed two trays last year for what I completed, this year seen an extra tray to hold my accomplishments.

This also marked the first winter I did not feel a need for forest isolation as well, so I will take that as a huge win!

The Snowlord's request for a photo got my middle daughter rather excited too. She snatched this shot on the way to her Cheerleading practice. This IS my smiling face too! ;)

I'm packing for Adepticon this morning. I may get some shots up on my blog as I've enjoyed

Ray, Fran, Clint, Tamsin, and Lee showing all the cool stuff- and loot- from Salute.

I've still Orcs, Inquisitors, French Peninsular, ACW, Zombicide primed and ready for the brush. I will add to my pile for sure this weekend. I already have Counter Threat and Assassination Protocol from Megacon games which added 40 new members to the mountain of neglect!

They all will wait for December as I have a garden to kickstart, training to perform and three 5k runs for April alone. Not to mention my brood of tween-agers that need sheltering from adolescent boys! My wee lad has discovered girls now too, it will be a long summer campaign keeping up with the 4 kids and making sure my wife remains happy! ;)

PS my email is darthbrom at G mail dot com...and I still have a Catachan tank commander that needs to get his immigration papers in order. Also for Curt expect a suprise sometime soon as we forest fellas just love suprises! ;)

It was mainly a tale of 15mm madness with a smidgen of 28mm thrown in, I enjoyed the challenge because it gave me a goal and in the end I didn't show everything I painted and even tried to try a sneak a scenery bomb past Curt but no dice.

It only happened due to no job yet and a lot of time on my hands (after the SWMBO has issued work orders) especially the dark winter months,

I know a lot of people steer away from modern due to it still being a raw subject but I believe most periods were a raw subject too.

I try to avoid a lot of it by using an imagination setting like Franonia and Rayonia and little else!